A one-day coordinated evaluation can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to be put on a kidney transplant waitlist, according to a new study from Yale School of Medicine. The study appears in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
Nearly 100,000 American are on the waitlist for a kidney transplant at any given time, and many die waiting. The Yale researchers studied the efficacy of a new system developed and implemented at Yale five years ago, that coordinates and schedules all necessary tests and assessments in one day to determine whether it led to faster placement on the organ sharing waitlist, thereby reducing the time the patient would have to wait before actually undergoing the transplant.
After studying around 900 patients, the researchers determined that those who underwent these centralized evaluations in one day were put on transplant wait lists an average of six months sooner than those who underwent standard evaluations in which tests were done one at a time over a period of weeks or months.
“Most transplant centers view a patient’s ability to complete the work-up for kidney transplant as an indicator that they will be compliant with medical instructions following transplant. We believe that this type of judgment should be eliminated, as it does not consider significant logistical and financial barriers many patients have to overcome in order to complete the transplant work-up themselves,” explained the study’s lead author, Dr. Sanjay Kulkarni, director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Yale School of Medicine.
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